CVE-2016-1000342 In Bouncy Castle JCE Provider ECDSA does not fully validate ASN.1 encoding of signature on verification

What is CVE-2016-1000342?

CVE-2016-1000342 is a high-severity vulnerability in Bouncycastle Bc-Java, published on 4 Jun 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In the Bouncy Castle JCE Provider version 1.55 and earlier ECDSA does not fully validate ASN.1 encoding of signature on verification. It is possible to inject extra elements in the sequence making up the signature and still have it validate, which in some cases may allow the introduction of 'invisible' data into a signed structure.

Weakness: CWE-347

Which versions are affected by CVE-2016-1000342?

6 open source packages ship an affected version, including org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14, org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15 and org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15on. It affects 2 products.

Products include Bouncycastle Bc-Java, Debian Debian Linux.

How do I fix CVE-2016-1000342?

Upgrade org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 to 1.56 or later.

Is CVE-2016-1000342 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2016-1000342 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Bouncycastle Bc-Java

• CVE-2007-6721 Legion of the Bouncy Castle Java Cryptography API Bleichenbacher Oracle Vulnerability Critical 10.0
• CVE-2018-1000613 Deserialization of Untrusted Data in Bouncy castle Critical 9.8
• CVE-2026-58062 Stapled OCSP response accepted without binding to the checked certificate Critical 9.3
• CVE-2026-59638 JSSE hostname verifier CN-fallback enabled by default despite documented opt-in Critical 9.3
• CVE-2026-59650 MTI/A0 DH agreement exponentiates unvalidated peer value Critical 9.3

All Bouncycastle Bc-Java vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2016-1000342, GHSA-qcj7-g2j5-g7r3, UBUNTU-CVE-2016-1000342.